Page History: Pre History of Jointers
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Page Revision: 2008/04/02 10:50
A
jointer produces a flat face on a board. (The modern jointer can also produce a flat edge that is square to the face, but most it its predecessors only produced a flat face.)
As covered in
Early History of Jointers, the modern jointer was patented by Climer and Riley in 1866. Before that, many attempts were made to produce an effective machine to flatten the faces of boards.
The earliest woodworking machines were sawmills that reduced a log to rough-sawn boards. The sawmill drastically reduced the amount of labor required to build a house. The next most labor-intensive process in producing finished lumber was surface planing, which produces boards that are reasonably smooth and of consistent thickness.
The first surface planers were mainly used to produce flooring and clapboards, because these products could be produced directly from rough-sawn lumber with no need to flatten them because these thin softwood products are nailed into place, which holds them flat. Still, it was desirable to mechanize the process of producing surfaced hardwood and thicker lumber, where flattening a face is mandatory.
The history before 1836 is incomplete because of the U.S. Patent Office fire in that year. A few of the older patents have survived. The very most important patents were restored after the fire, and a few more-or-less random patent specifications were discovered in the papers of their inventor or the inventor's lawyer.
Mott's Machine for Planing Boards out of Wind
In 1806,
Joseph Mott patented a machine for planing boards out of wind. Mott's planer used a fixed-knife cutterhead that is essentially a hand plane suspended above the board to be planed. The board is dogged to a traveling carriage, which is the only part of the planer that is powered.
Mott's planer would have been only partially effective at flattening boards because the action of the cutter would push the board downwards while it was being cut, and it would spring back afterwards.
The Daniels Planer
The first successful machine for flattening the face of a board was the Daniels planer.
Patented in 1834 by Thomas E. Daniels of Worcester, MA, this machine had a footprint more than twice as long as the longest board it could flatten. The board to be planed was placed on the carriage, and then shimmed so that it could not rock or flex. The carriage then moved under the horizontally-spinning cutter, which produced a flat upper surface. The Daniels planer was very successful, and was produced by several different makers:
Gray & Woods' Machine for Planing Lumber out of Wind
In 1854 Solomon S. Gray was granted a
patent for a machine for planing lumber out of wind. The machine was similar in form to the Daniels planer except that it substituted a cylindrical cutterhead similar to that on the Woodworth planer. The board to be planed was held by a clever dogging arrangement on each end. Instead of presser bars, which have the undesirable tendency to push the board flat before it is planed, Gray's planer had a cutterhead designed to prevent the board from lifting up as it was being planed.
Gray partnered with another Boston machinist, Solomon A. Woods, to manufacture Gray's planer. The partnership was known as
Gray & Woods. Gray's design must have been commercially successful because the patent was both extended and reissued. The partnership lasted until 1873 when the firm became known as the
S. A. Woods Machine Co.